Book notes, March 17

Your Rocky Top experiences and recollections — whether as a student, alumnus or fan — could be part of a new children’s interactive electronic book that will be produced by the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

The UT Rocky Top Institute is seeking short stories for its upcoming children’s book, “Tales from Rocky Top.” Three winners will be chosen and their work published in the first edition of the book. Each winner will receive a $1,000 cash prize.

The submission deadline is April 15. Entries are to be submitted electronically to rhtmast@utk.edu.

Stories will be accepted from current UT students and alumni, as well as from Bearden High School, which was chosen as the pilot high school in the inaugural year of the contest. The intent is to expand the contest to all Knox County and surrounding high schools in coming years.

Submitted stories must be a maximum of 1,000 words and convey the meaning of Rocky Top from the author’s perspective. Rocky Top is open to interpretation — the song, the mountain, UT or football. The stories must be geared toward children in preschool to primary grades and be designed to be read aloud.

Winners will be notified by May 15. Once the stories have been selected, the UT Pride of the Southland Marching Band will record the background music for the electronic book. A local artist will be chosen to illustrate it. Over the summer, students in the UT School of Journalism and Electronic Media will put the pieces together and the final product is expected to be available for purchase in the fall as an app.

Judy Goldman will lead the Nonfiction workshops and will be the keynote speaker at the awards banquet. Goldman’s memoir, “Losing My Sister,” was published in 2012. She is the author of two novels: “Early Leaving” and “The Slow Way Back,” a finalist for Southeastern Booksellers Association’s Novel of the Year.

Abigail DeWitt will be the General Session speaker and will lead the Fiction workshops. DeWitt is the author of two novels, “Lili” and “Dogs,” which was nominated for The National Book Award.

Loudon County author Connie Jordan Green will lead the Poetry workshops.

George Ella Lyon will lead the Writing for Young People workshops.

The Editing workshops will be led by Judith Geary, acquisitions editor for Ingalls Publishing Group.

Membership is open to all writers, regardless of geographic location. Additional information and a conference registration form can be found on the Tennessee Mountain Writers’ web site, www.tmwi.org.